Six UK areas selected for hyper-fast broadband

The Government has selected six locations to pilot a scheme which will see homes and businesses get broadband speeds of 1Gb per second.

The plan to give the UK better connection speeds could allow hospitals to share HD quality graphics of medical scans in seconds, speeding up diagnosis.

It could also allow school classrooms to deliver educational videos to students at home, streaming content to a larger number of pupils at a time.
In the first stage of a £200m project to make the UK more digitally connected, internet connection speeds will be increased in: Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire, West Sussex, Coventry/Warwickshire, Bristol/Bath/North East Somerset, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.
The Government’s four-year plan is for the entire UK to be ready for faster network connections by 2021.

Image: A man installing fibre-optic cable. File photo
It will update the UK’s ageing telephone network by replacing the copper wires running from telephone cabinets into buildings with fibre-optic cables capable of handling much more data.
This has been packaged as part of the Government’s £23bn national productivity investment fund, £740m of which is to be ploughed into digital infrastructure.
Minister for digital Matt Hancock MP said: “We want to see more commercial investment in the gold standard connectivity that full fibre provides.
“To keep Britain as the digital world leader that it is, we need to have the right infrastructure in place to allow us to keep up with the rapid advances in technology now and in the future.”